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It's hard to say what will become of this since they based their translation on Haeleth's pre-existing work (depends on the agreement they've arrived at. Will the release go ahead if Key says no?) Any way you look at it, the chances of release are practically nil until Key's permission has been sought.

Clannad might have a decent shot at release, although I'd expect a very lengthy and difficult editing process given the community-based nature of their project.

It's hard to say what will become of this since they based their translation on Haeleth's pre-existing work (depends on the agreement they've arrived at. Will the release go ahead if Key says no?) Any way you look at it, the chances of release are practically nil until Key's permission has been sought.

Clannad might have a decent shot at release, although I'd expect a very lengthy and difficult editing process given the community-based nature of their project.

well, it is hard to say, but usually, key or VA wont reply to this kind of request.
because it is not business trade, it is just fan creation and kind of doujin project.
there is no benefit for the company directly and this is "gray area" under the copyright law.

if key give them premission, it is true more people will order the game from japan, but they are afraid more this kind of requests will come from China and Korea or other countries. and it just doesnt feel right for key that a company gives fans permission to release an unoffical patch for their product.

if key doesnt give the permission to them, they can still release it, and key has no control for that, unless key want a lawsuit in US, which will cost more money than a translation patch releasing. it is not worth it.

so giving permission is not the right thing to do for key and there is not much benefit from ordering, on the other hand, giving no permission is fine but key cannot really stop you by just rejecting your request for permission.

that is why in anime or gaming, japanese company only want to sell their product to offical US companies under business contract, that way they will get a "visible" amount of money. on the contrary, they will never speak with any doujin team. that is the same goes for their local japanese doujin teams.

they cannot stop doujin, but they wont encourage doujin, either.

here is an example.
my firends sent key an email two year ago to get a permission for a doujin product, the reply from key is: "you dont have to tell us". that is it. they wont give you an "OK" and they cannot say "you cannot do it", either. this is how they deal with it.

so, i dont know whether the kanon translation patch will release or not.
but i am sure that key WILL NOT give anyone this kind of permission.
btw, key is the company that do NOT really care about the market other than japan. the licence fee for their product is ridiculous HUGE.

if key doesnt give the permission to them, they can still release it, and key has no control for that, unless key want a lawsuit in US, which will cost more money than a translation patch releasing. it is not worth it.

afaik, the original translator intends to authorize a release as long as Key (or more specifically, Jun Maeda, since his concern is the feelings of the original creator rather than legality) doesn't reject his request outright. An indifferent response would be taken as an implicit yes.

However, If Maeda or Visual Art's clearly rejects the idea, I doubt the patch will be released - not without the new team providing its own translation from scratch, anyway.

It's kind of amusing, though. SNOW borrows very heavily from games like Kanon and AIR. In fact, the storytelling structure is very reminiscent of AIR, while characterization takes many cues from Kanon. Though, fortunately for Studio Mebius, even if they were taking lots of ideas from other games, they at least chose some good games to take ideas from, and thus the game by itself is still pretty decent. Having I've Sound on board to do some of the music was also a plus, and the singer for the opening to Nadesico sang the opening and ending songs of the game.
Coincidentally, both Key and Studio Mebius used VisualArt's's game engine, and when RealLive came out, SNOW got ported to that for one of the releases.